Marlborough Stirling's company standard of operating system is Microsoft Windows NT 4, although for a number of lower spec portables there are copies of Windows 95.
I know you have got this far otherwise you wouldn't be here, but here's a reminder
Now press as it says [CTRL][ALT][DEL]
Your name must be on the top line, press [TAB] to move around the boxes, enter your password in the password box, and the Domain will say MSG_EXCH_FR
There are 5 areas to note (yes 5)
1. The icons in the top left hand corner are called Desktop Icons, these are programs you can run, much like the program manager icons, but these are put on the desktop, much like you have a cup of tea, they are there to help them be close to hand.
2. The icons in the top right are the Microsoft Office Toolbar, these are the icons which allow you quick access to Microsoft products, much like you would books from a shelf.
3. The grey bar down the bottom with what looks like a button in labelled "Inbox - Microsoft Outlook" is the task bar, this sows the currently running applications.
4. The START button in the bottom left hand corner, sadly this is the replacement for the program manger, it works completely differently.
5. The "System Tray" or systray for short, is in the bottom right hand corner, containing your clock and the antivirus software ( this is where the envelope saying you have mail appears. )
In order shown in the picture above - this may be different on your PC
My computer - allows you to access your files and different drives
Internet Explorer - allows you to access the Intranet or Internet if you have access.
NB: The Internet is a world wide network where you can join people around the world in many activities, the Internet explorer allows access to a section of that called the World Wide Web (or www for short) this is a collection of documents, sounds, pictures and the odd file or two. The Intranet is our own version of this on a very small scale in comparison, we (I) have put up documents that might be needed, information which might be of interest and so on. The www is a much bigger idea of this, will millions, and I mean millions of people like me creating sites like this which are for public viewing, no one other than people in Marlborough Stirling can see these documents.
Network Neighbourhood - This allows you to see which machines are visible on our network, and depending on your access connect to them
Microsoft Outlook - Our favourite mail program ( more )
Recycle Bin - This is where your files go that you might delete, ( this does not apply to anything you delete inside WordStar or a DOS prompt. ) As a result, you can recover them as long as they are there, once deleted from the Recycle Bin - they are gone for ever.
For those of you who are familiar with a previous version of Windows ie Windows 3.11 this is the same toolbar that was available in Office 4.2 - now we are on Office 97 - relax we didn't go through 4.3, 4.4 4.5.... all the way up to 97, but 4.2, 4.3, 95 and now 97. As you pass you mouse over each button on your toolbar a small yellow box appears with the application it will run if you click on it, this is called a ToolTip. Microsoft Office maybe covered in another guide soon.
The taskbars simple purpose in life is to tell you what applications are running, simply if its not there, its not running ( there are a couple of exceptions to this rule, but they appear like the antivirus stuff in the systray. )
The systray tells you about applications which are running which you may not have control of, for example, the AntiVirus stuff, its not an application which you need use, but it is something that runs on your machine taking up very little of your computers time.
The start menu is something very different to the nice Program Manager which we had in Windows 3.11, despite being very different and more un-intuative, its actually much better designed. An odd concept, but unlike program manager where you could only have 1 level of splits, so you might have, "Microsoft Office", "others" you can have multi levels much like a directory tree. It means the programs can be sorted much better and categorised. Most of the options on the Start Menu aren't really going to be of much use to you, (sorry), however, the three that you will use are
Programs - this takes you to a menu much like a applications menu containing all the applications on your PC you can run.
Documents - this shows you a list of all the documents you have used recently so, no matter which application you were in (excel, Powerpoint, word, visio) you can open them with just a couple of clicks.
Shutdown - To turn off your computer, you must shut down windows NT. Select this option and select shutdown, there are two other options, restart, and log off current user. Restart will mean your computer shuts down, and then powers back up again, log off will log you out of what you are doing, and ask you to log in again. However, shutdown will log you out and prompt you with a box with a button saying "Restart". ( Do not turn the machine off without seeing the restart button )
